Ticket to Ride! (In the Rubber Maid)

When Mom and Dad have an organizing streak hit 'em, it means good things for this girl:

She loves nothing more than to be pushed around the house. Fast. Everything she rides has to be fast. She has no fear.

Needless to say, Daddio (and his poor back) spent a good portion of Christmas clean-up crusing around the living room.

Until he burned right out. Turns out, he can tell her no. But only when his back makes him do it.

Fun stuff!

(now, whenever there is an empty tub in our house for any reason, we hide it quickly! ha!)

Who...

...is that cool baby?
Oh! It's HER!

Christmas Part 1: Church, Family and Fun!

Christmas Eve 2011 was fairly fun and fairly chaotic!

Dad, GrandDan and Uncle Saeth got this girl ready...

In her Christmas pretties.

We met up with them for Christmas Eve services at church. Anna was so cute! She sat nicely on her uncle's lap for most of the service.
When the lights dimmed for "Silent Night" she started singing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," which is the song she associates with darkness. She was in complete awe of the candles and the singing and clapped heartily when it was all done.

Back at home, she found presents to be good fun.

Especially the "Band in a Box." Turns out, she likes maracas:

She wanted to play with, wear and read her gifts:

Christmas morning was wild and crazy withy lots of people, presents and more presents. The wagon was a favorite:

And the cousin sweetness? {{melt}}

Anna loved opening gifts...even if they weren't hers.

Her cousin's hamster cage system was interesting!
And, being her Father's daughter, she LOVED the Santa hat. In fact, she loves Santa in general. Well, everything but the real guy.

She generally loved the day...

And so did her Grandpa's.

Christmas 2011 Part II: I have an AWESOME family!

Our celebrations continued long after the holiday.

For the first time in 3 + years, almost all of my cousins got together! We had fun when we were kids, of course, but turns out we have a BLAST as adults!

Here are the three girls with Grandma:

And my cousin, uncle and Michael.
He fits right in.

Turns out cooking for 20+ people isn't easy...

...but is lots of fun!
Here are all but one of the "greats." Anna isn't good at sharing and stole the doll from the girl in purple very first thing. sigh.

Riley is so cute! And he takes photos at my house because I shamelessly bribe him!

My dad and his bros!

And us grand kids behaving:

Here is grandma with her grandsons and great grand kids:

And, of course, the whole group!

We tend to be very, very serious.

After the big family shin-dig, we had some "like family" friends over.

The mama is one of my oldest friends. Here are our babes playing:

I didn't catch it on camera, but they each held an end of the blanket and played "peekaboo" with each other. It was too cute. Other than that, they stole each other's toys. That's 1 year old's for ya!

These two were some what uncooperative in their photo-taking:
The toy-sharing. Anna stole the one in Jackson's hand moments later.
Sigh. Fun times, though. And lots of good memories!

Santa When You're 1

So Anna does this really cute thing where she says, "ho, ho, ho" andpats her belly when you ask her what Santa says.

Every time she sees an image of him.

So we thought there was a chance she would like him. Sit on his lap long enough for a photo.

We were wrong. This is as close as we could get without panic, shrieking and terror.

Oh, well.